Born of Woman

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘I’m Jennifer Winterton. That won’t mean a thing, I suppose, but …’

  ‘Yes, it does. Good gracious me! I recognise you now. You’re the one who … Yes, I’ve read your book—I loved it. And I saw you on the television, back in the summer, wasn’t it? Fancy seeing you here! How d’you do. I’m Staff-Nurse Catherine Stapleton—Kate, for short. Very pleased to meet you in the flesh.’

  Jennifer mumbled greetings, tried to force a smile. At least she’d got recognition and a friendly voice. Perhaps she could exploit them, wangle an entry into Special Baby Care.

  Nurse Stapleton was beaming. ‘Look, why not come to the office and have a quick glass of sherry? I’d be thrilled to hear about the television—behind the scenes and everything, and perhaps you’d sign my book for me if I bring it in.’

  ‘I’d l … love to talk to you—later—and of course I’ll sign the book. The problem is I’m a bit … distracted at the moment. I’ve got a friend in labour, you see, and I think her baby may be put in Special Care—or there already. Could you do me a favour—let me have a look?’

  ‘What’s your friend’s name? I know all the babies in the unit.’

  ‘Grant. Susan Grant.’

  ‘No, we’ve no baby Grant. I’m certain of that.’

  ‘Oh … I see.’ Jennifer frowned. Was that good news or bad? Was Susie’s baby still struggling to be born, or had it died already, turned out a monster or a mess? ‘Could I … er … see the unit, anyway, have a look at those machines and things?’

  ‘It’s not really allowed, my dear. Come and have that sherry. I’ve got a ten-minute tea-break, and I’d be only too happy to make it something stronger.’

  ‘No. I … couldn’t drink—honestly. I feel a bit … Look, please let me in there, just for a few minutes. I won’t be any nuisance.’

  ‘Well, just a peep, then. I shouldn’t really, but it is Christmas Day, so …’

  She led the way. Jennifer followed into glaring lights and flashing screens—ten perspex cages wired up to monitors, whole batteries of dials and knobs and levers, letting out a constant hum and whine. She peered through the side of the first germproof incubator. Inside it was not a baby—you couldn’t call it a baby—but a bulge-headed, stick-limbed foetus, too tiny to be born. It lay spread-eagled on its back in a pool of liquid faeces, its legs drawn up like the haunches of a skinned and hairless rabbit, eyes bandaged, head shaved. Little strips of sticking plaster were criss-crossed across its head and face, attaching discs and tubes. It was breathing very fast, almost desperately, its stomach pulsing in and out as if it were a hooked fish. Lying beside it were a pink rabbit and a fluffy teddy bear—toys which seemed a mockery since the child could neither see nor touch them. Yet every incubator had its miniature Christmas stocking, filled with toys and sweets. Sweets when they couldn’t suck so much as a drop of milk!

  Jennifer turned away. In the next two cages lay the twins, already separated and strung up like exhibits in a horror-film laboratory—new and bruised arrivals, their stomachs splodged with dried and purple blood, knife-sharp ribs almost cutting through their fleshless skin. Perpex head-boxes cut off their heads from their tiny gasping bodies. A doctor was adjusting the machines, two nurses checking every smallest movement on the screens. The father was there, still in his green gown, nodded wearily at Jennifer, tears streaming down his cheeks. He looked huge against his tiny dying sons. All that powerful apparatus, those miracles of technology, might not be enough to save them.

  Jennifer could feel her own tears threatening. She followed Nurse Stapleton to the other side of the room, watched her adjust the nose-tube on a plumper pinker baby who was kicking against her fetters, mouth opening and shutting in what looked like silent fury.

  ‘That’s my namesake,’ she said. ‘Another Kate. She’s been with us twenty weeks.’

  Jennifer reeled. ‘Twenty weeks! Like that?

  ‘She’s fine. Warm and snug. No draughts, fed continuously, twenty-four hour nursing.’

  ‘Yes, but …’ There were more important needs than food. How could anyone know what mental pains those babies might be suffering? The fears, the isolation, the deaf insensible perspex on all sides, their mothers only a shadow blocking out the light. To be twenty weeks with your head clamped at the neck, your body pierced with tubes! A modern miracle. But old-fashioned things like terror, panic, loneliness, could still go on inside. Warning-bells would sound if the chamber overheated or the machine blew a fuse, but nothing could ever register for nightmares or despair. Machines like that could warp a child’s whole future. Babies needed arms around them, breasts to suckle, human warmth and contact. Whatever the mechanical marvels, the technological breakthroughs, no machine had been invented which could love and cuddle and commune.

  Nurse Stapleton was smiling. ‘All right, my dear? There’s two other rooms beside this, and a nursery where we keep the bigger babies, but if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to work now. Tea-break’s over! Pop in and see me about five o’clock if you’re still around. I get a longer break, then, and we can talk about your book.’

  Jennifer stumbled down to the foyer, stood staring at the notice-board with its endless list of wards—Florence, Wilbur, Goldsmith, Grosvenor—people ill and dying all around her. ‘CHAPEL’, said another sign. At least it would be quiet there; the Christmas service over, the place a sanctuary. She could smell faint traces of the congregation as she pushed open the door—incense and hot feet.

  She stopped in wonder. The chapel was the most handsome room in the hospital. No lavatory tiles or lumbering water-pipes, but blazing mosaics, brilliant glass. Almost automatically, she knelt. It seemed sacrilege to treat a chapel like a hotel lounge and just sit or stand about. There was a Christmas crib to one side of the door, wonky peg-doll shepherds lurching across cardboard rocks and green crêpe-paper grass. The Virgin Mary had just given birth to a papier-mâché baby almost as big as she was, but she still looked strong and smug. The delivery room was a stable, the only incubator hay and ass’ breath. No forceps or epidurals, no rubes or mess or fuss. Just ‘she brought forth a child’. The Madonna already had done. Hours ago at midnight—when Susie was still struggling and she herself was sick and headachey with patchwork squares—the Christmas miracle had come to pass, the Christ-child born as smoothly as a star. It was so beautiful, so simple, she longed to believe that things like that could happen. Even the lambs, which were normally born so simply and so swiftly, still had their fatalities. She remembered Sooty, the tiny orphan lamb she had bottle-fed in Molly’s shed, whose mother had perished from exhaustion after a twenty-two hour labour.

  She shuddered, tried to distract herself by gazing round the chapel. There were six lilies on the altar—white Susannah lilies—fusing innocence and death. She had read in Hester’s diaries that lilies were favourable in childbirth and should be worn or grown by women who wanted a son. Boy or girl, it hardly mattered any longer. Either would be a miracle, so long as it survived. The lily was also an antidote for sorrow. What had Hester called it? The ‘forget-grief herb’. She prayed they wouldn’t need it in that context, not for death or sorrow, but for life and resurrection, newborn innocence.

  She opened the prayer-book on the bench in front of her. There were no prayers for actual labour—only thanksgiving for a child, or prayers to be said following a still-birth. She dared not glance at either, turned instead to the funeral service, closed her eyes. Lyn was standing in the pew beside her, so pale and strained she feared he would collapse.

  ‘Man born of woman has but a short time to live; like a flower he blossoms and then withers; like a shadow he flees and never stays.’

  She preferred the old translation. He cometh up, fleeth, never continueth. Those archaic forms hid the pain behind the words. ‘The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.’ Giveth, taketh, it was still the same. He had taken Susannah away, Lyn away, snatched her own baby before it was even born; maybe Susie now and her child.

  She stared up at the windows.
Faith, Hope and Charity glowed radiant in the coloured glass. All were women—sturdy courageous women, holding swords and scripts and palms. Caritas had a tumble of children clinging to her skirts, suckling from her breasts; Fides looked like Hester, grim and strong, standing alone above the grey and purple hills.

  Jennifer stood up. Hester had endured and so must she. If Susie’s child was sickly, dying, or still labouring to be born, then Susie needed hope. Spes was stern and slender, brandishing a palm in one hand and a sword in the other. She would take that sword and return to the labour ward, and if they still fobbed her off with muddle and excuses, she would search out Staff-Nurse Stapleton again, and beg her help.

  She toiled up all the stairs again, feeling drained and exhausted, as if she had given birth herself. Two of the delivery rooms were empty now, the doors standing open, a nurse clearing up inside, humming Jingle Bells.

  ‘Excuse me. I’m Susie Grant’s friend. I wondered if …’

  ‘She’s back in the ward.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Queen Mary Ward, I think it is. One floor up.’

  ‘But has she …?’ No, mustn’t ask. Supposing the news were bad? She couldn’t bear to hear it from that cheerful, humming, heartless, ugly nurse.

  ‘MERRY XMAS’ proclaimed the gold and scarlet banner above Queen Mary ward, though Christmas looked paler down below it, appeared to have petered out already in debris and exhaustion. Grounded paper chains were littered on the floor now, leftovers of sweets and sherry abandoned on bedside tables, fractious children wingeing with fatigue, their new-born brothers and sisters howling in their cots.

  Jennifer faltered at the door, torn between worry and excitement. There was no sign of Susie, but perhaps she was in the nursery, tending her own child. She must have a child, or they wouldn’t shove her in here, in a ward alive with babies.

  ‘May I help you?’ The nurse had another wailing infant in her arms. ‘Ah, you’re Susie Grant’s friend, are you? She’s been asking for you—beginning to think you’d run away and left her! She’s down there on the left. The bed with the curtains drawn.’

  ‘Has she …?’ No. Jennifer still couldn’t bring herself to ask. Not if the curtains were drawn. That was normally a bad sign. Meant the patient needed extra rest and care. What had Susie been through? Would there be a cot beside her, a baby at her breast?

  Jennifer walked between the rows of beds, glancing in at all the other cots. Blue blankets for boys, pink for girls. Big babies, tiny ones, dark, fair, squalling, smiling, crumpled babies. She almost resented them, because they weren’t hers or even Susie’s. No one smiled at her. She had got to know the patients in the antenatal ward, but these were total strangers. She stopped outside Susie’s bed, the only one with curtains drawn. ‘Let there be a cot,’ she prayed. She fixed her eyes on the tiny blue daisies on the faded cretonne, trying to pluck up courage to go in. The noise behind her—chatter, babies’ cries—stuttered into silence as she drew in her breath and stepped forward, wiping her clammy palms dry on her skirt.

  ‘S … Susie?’ she murmured.

  Silence.

  ‘Susie, it’s me—Jenny. May I come in?’

  No answer. She slipped between the curtains. Susie was lying ominously still, staring straight in front of her. She didn’t look up, made no sign of recognition. Her hair was tangled on the pillow, dark with sweat and grease, purple smudges beneath her eyes, her face pale and almost haggard. The covers were thrown off, her blood-stained nightdress rucked up around her knees. She looked tiny without the bulge, like a different person entirely, someone younger and more girlish. And yet her face had aged. There was a fierce and harrowed expression in her eyes, an air of total exhaustion. Her locker was bare—no Christmas food or clutter, no triumphant flowers. Worst of all, no cot.

  Jennifer tried to find her voice again. ‘H … how are you, darling? I’ve been so worried. I …’

  Susie turned away. ‘You weren’t there,’ she muttered to the wall. ‘You didn’t come.’

  ‘I did, Susie. I tried. I’ve been here hours, but they wouldn’t let me in. I’m sorry, darling. I’m really truly sorry. I kept asking, but … What happened? What …?’

  Susie slumped back again to face her, eyes anguished and accusing. Tears were filling them, brimming over, streaming down her cheeks. ‘Go away,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s too late, now. I don’t want to see you now. I don’t want to s … see anyone again—ever ever ever. Go away.’

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  ‘Right,’ Lyn shouted. Now, push. PUSH!’

  ‘I am pushing.’

  ‘Harder! The damn thing’s still jammed fast. OK, take a breather. I’ll count to three and then let’s both give all we’ve got. All right? One, two …’

  Edward wasn’t dressed for snow. His coat stopped just above the knees, his expensive shoes were already stained and water-logged. He tried to get a firmer grip on the back end of the Morris, which had skidded on a patch of ice some twenty miles from Hernhope and was now stuck across the road with its rear nearside wheel in the ditch. He stumbled, clutched at the mudguard.

  ‘Watch out!’ Lyn stamped his feet to warm them up. Whirling flakes were stinging against their eyelids, turning to tears on their cheeks. The countryside was choked and gagged with snow, blindfolded in darkness. Strange presences and shadows seemed to stride towards them, then drift away again. There was no other traffic, no comforting lights of human habitation, no sound except the shrill and desperate wind. They might have been on the moon, or in some other darker world or dream, where the only real and solid things were cold and exhaustion.

  ‘Let’s start again,’ said Lyn, screwing up his eyes against the driving snow. ‘Try and lift and push at the same time. Ready? One, two, three … Slowly, inch by inch, the car juddered forward as they heaved from behind, trying to lift it up and out.

  ‘We’re winning!’ shouted Lyn. ‘Keep pushing. Don’t slack off.’

  Snow whipped them from above, soaked them from below, but at least they had freed the wheel and the car was back on the road in a dip between two hills, nose pointing south again.

  ‘Right, straighten her up a bit. That’s fine. I only hope she’ll start. Can you push while I drive? That’ll help me up the hill, keep me steady.’

  Edward nodded dumbly as Lyn climbed in and slammed the door. The car spluttered, coughed, but started. Lyn let the engine crescendo like a hymn of triumph. He was in control now, fighting the road, the elements. Edward was just the garage boy, the slumped and shivering passenger, doing as he was told, getting out, getting in, clearing windows, freeing wheels. They had been driving two long hours already, but had not yet hit the main road, were still stuck north of Elsdon in the wild and rugged moorland west of Harwood Forest. Half an hour from Hernhope, a blizzard had sprung up, howling round the car, bringing new risks to already treacherous roads.

  ‘We must turn back,’ Lyn had urged. ‘We’ll never make it. The roads will be impassable.’

  ‘No.’ Edward sat steely and unmoving. ‘We’re through the worst, surely?’

  ‘The worst roads, maybe, but not the worst weather—not by any means. The climate can be merciless up here. I’ve known people buried in the snow. Even local folk who know their way around.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get to Newcastle. I can’t turn back—not now. Can’t face that stretch of road again—if you can call it road.’

  Lyn knew those can’ts. He used the word himself. Can’ts were close to panic. Edward had been tense and jumpy every inch of the journey, driving from the passenger-seat, braking before he did, warning him of hazards he could see all too well himself. Yet insisted on driving on. Lyn knew they ought to stop, but if Edward were so pig-headed, why should he care? He had lost his house, his future, so why not risk his life as well? It was almost a relief to do battle with the roads, take his feelings out on wheel and gear-stick rather than sit passive on his own and stare out at the void.

  He had felt
a sort of crazed exhilaration at being out at all, when all cautious folk were barricaded safe indoors. He was the only man left in the world—Edward hardly counted, huddled there chewing at the fingers of his gloves. There was some hellbent elation in the skittering wheels, the drunken snowflakes whipping against the windscreen, the sudden bombardments of snow cascading down from overhanging branches as the car lurched and skidded under them. It was damned cold, bloody dangerous, but at least the weather was in sympathy, howling with him for his lost and plundered homeland, paying Edward back by harrassing him with blizzard and black ice. But now it had fucked him up as well, brought him to a standstill.

  He wound the window down, shouted back to Edward ‘Right—start pushing now. Try and keep the back straight. I’ll take it very slowly in second gear, OK?’

  ‘OK.’ Edward’s voice was shredded by the wind.

  The car strained against the hill. The snow was not too deep as yet, but fresh snow had fallen on to old, leaving the roads like ice-rinks. The Morris whined in protest, wheels slithering and spinning. Edward was sliding around himself, suddenly lost his balance and went slap down in the snow. Lyn jammed the handbrake on, stuck his head out of the window.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I … er … think so.’ Edward floundered up, shaking snow from his coat, checking his hands for grazes.

  ‘You’d better get back in, or you’ll break your bloody neck. I think I can manage now.’

  Edward hobbled in beside him, panting and out of breath, snow still fringing his trousers.

  Lyn pressed his foot on the accelerator. The wheels spun uselessly. ‘Blast,’ he muttered, tried again.

  Edward was fidgeting and fretting, turning round, peering out. ‘If you can’t go up, why not reverse back and take a run at it?’

  ‘OK, OK. Just be patient, can’t you?’

  Edward drove a limousine on well-shod city roads where snow would be as miraculous as manna. Even the taxi he’d turned up in had been a bloody great Mercedes. What did he know of ancient fourth-hand cars or force nine gales? He wrenched the gear-stick into reverse, let the car run back a little. The mirror showed him only snow on snow. His headlights lit up a tiny snow-bound sanctuary around him, then blinded themselves in the darker world beyond.